Get it All Done, No Matter What!

Welcome to LegalBiz Cafe! Digitally remastered with AI, in this podcast series, Attorney Shaune B. Arnold gives to frustrated professionals like YOU the tools and resources you need to make the LEAP to entrepreneurship so you can start, build or fix a business you will absolutely LOVE. 

Feeling buried by your to-do list? In this energizing episode of LegalBiz Café, Shaune shares practical strategies to overcome overwhelm, prioritize with purpose, and get it all done—without burning out. Discover how lists, boundaries, and saying “no” can clear your mind and power your productivity like never before. 

Transcript

Hello, friends! …and welcome …once again …to legal biz cafe. I am your host, Attorney Shaune B Arnold and boy, oh boy. We're getting it all done today, …no matter what!

But before we dive in and complete that task, I want to talk to you for just a moment about what we are doing here on legal biz cafe, I have been a business consultant for 40 years, and a business attorney for 30 of those 40 years, and I find that there is a repeated challenge when I'm working with my clients, and that is they are often dealing with a sense of overwhelm. They're often dealing with fear and with a number of negative emotions, shame and guilt and all kinds of things that stop them dead in their tracks. These things prevent strong entrepreneurs from starting, from building or from fixing a business that they will absolutely love. And so that is what we are doing here on legal biz cafe. We're dealing with those issues. We're dealing with the overwhelm. We're dealing with the fear. We're dealing with the guilt and the shame and all of those negative emotions that can stop you and keep you from attaining your goals.

So, today we are talking about getting it all done when you just have too many things on your plate. Now, I have to admit that this was a very conveniently chosen topic for today, because I'm finding myself in overwhelm this entire month. Getting it all done has been my personal challenge, and it is mostly because I put too many things on my plate. I hate to say no to people and we're going to talk about all of those things this evening.

So, when you find that you're having a challenge getting it all done, does that ever put you into a sense of overwhelm with everything that you have to do? And if so, how do you go about getting it all done?

Now and again, I can experience overwhelm. This means I've got a bunch of white noise playing in my head and I can't quite figure out where I'm supposed to be and what I'm supposed to be doing. Seriously, when I woke up this morning, the first thing I thought about was this show, and then the clients started calling, and the documents needed to be done. I have had conversations with other people on a closing that involves about eight different contracts. I've got a lot of moving parts this morning and I forgot all about the show. Oh my goodness! If I had not gone on to my email to send out a document and saw a reminder about today’s show, I might have missed it entirely.

So, what that tells me is that I need to take a step back. Now, sometimes when you're experiencing overwhelm because of all that you have to do, it's just kind of a life challenge. For example, if you are getting your degree or something like that, you've got a lot of work to do, and you have to hit those deadlines. You’ve got to turn your reports in. You have to do your homework. So, you cannot afford to just walk away when you're in that sense of overwhelm.

When that happens to me, I will generally put my tasks on autopilot, meaning I know what I have to do today and I know what I have to do tomorrow. I'm not going to stop and think about it, evaluate it, complain about it, or any of that. I am not going to put myself in a position where I allow myself to start feeling negative emotions over all that I have to do.

If you don't put it in autopilot when you're in those life situations where you've just got to get it done, then you might wind up with your knee on the mat. And none of us want that, so put it in autopilot. Just get up in the morning, understanding what you have to do …and get her done.

Now, sometimes that works when everything that you have to do is oriented towards everything else that you have to do. In other words, you're going to school and you have certain topics that you're dealing with, and they're all related. It’s a bit harder to drop the ball in these circumstances.

If you are an entrepreneur that is looking for several different streams of income, then you might find that you've got loose ends flying all over the place. Putting it in auto pilot is not necessarily going to help you get it all done. In those situations, I do have some tips for you on how you can maintain and get it all done.

The first thing that I would suggest is that you make a list of what you have to do. I knew that I had a lot of moving parts today. I have some things listed in my calendar, on my telephone, and in some post-it notes, etc., representing things that I thought of as I woke up this morning that I had not put into my calendar. Those post-it noted things are the items that had basically slid off my plate. It can be hard keeping everything in check.

This is the reason why I love to work from lists. And when I find that I'm getting probably halfway through, or maybe even two thirds through the to-do list, I will literally move everything that's still left to be done to a brand new list, because I know that I will have more task items.

Moving things to a new list does a couple of things for me. Number one, it makes me feel as though I have accomplished something. I mean, I really feel the accomplishment when I'm moving things to a new list, and the old list just sort of disappears, and now I have a list of nine things to do, rather than 29 things to do. So that's really very helpful.

The next thing that I would suggest for you is, once you make the list of things that you have to do, prioritize that list. Some of those things can wait until later in the day, or until tomorrow, or until you get further input from somebody else. Some of those things cannot wait. So you need to prioritize what needs to be done right now and what can wait until later. And then, once you make that determination, take a look at those things that can be done later, and ask yourself whether you can let some of those things go. 

And I know that's really difficult, because especially if someone is depending on you to do certain things and you just don't want to let anything slip off your plate. If you're like me, you're obsessed with getting everything done correctly and on time, but every now and then you do have to make that executive decision that it's okay to let something go.

So how do you do that when you're obsessed, when you have that obsessive personality? Well, the first thing you want to do is just sort of take a step back and decide what you really want to accomplish, and whether these things that are at the bottom of your to-do list are really designed to get you toward your goal. Because sometimes what we're doing is just creating busy work because there are things that will get us toward our goal that we don't really want to take on.

I mean, I can think of a bevy of wonderful administrative tasks that I need to perform here in my office. I’m looking at a pile of filing, for example, that needs to be done. However, if that pile of filing is keeping me from making prospecting calls when I know that I hate making prospecting calls, and that is something that should be higher up and prioritized on my list, then I really need to make a very hard decision about what I want and about what I'm willing to do to get what I want.

I've often heard it said that people who will have wonderful things in their lives tomorrow need to accomplish goals today to get those things into their lives tomorrow. So, decide what you want and understand that you may have to do things that you don’t want to do today in order to have the things that you want tomorrow. I know it sucks, but it's the way it is.

In taking that step back, I would suggest that you decide whether you're actually just jumping through hoops that people have created for you or that you have even created for yourself. Are you jumping through hoops? Are you creating drama?

Some people are like that. No matter what the task is, they will create a layer of drama around that task. Is that something that's going on in your world right now? Are you overwhelmed because you're creating drama and you're making things difficult when they don't need to be difficult? Again, this may be a matter of taking that step back and analyzing what you're doing, deciding what you really want to do, and then determining what your best steps are to get you to that position.

The very last tip that I have for you today on getting it all done is to learn to say no. That is so hard for a lot of people. It's difficult for me, because when somebody asks me for something, I know it's because they need it or they really want it, and I don't want to disappoint anyone.

If you are of the same heart where you just don't want to disappoint people, stop before you say yes. Take a look at your plate. Is it already full? ...Is it piled high? ...Is there stuff dripping off onto the counter? Because if there is, then saying no to somebody might be the best possible thing that you could possibly do for them. Because if you cannot perform well, then you should not perform at all. 

It is better to say no to someone with an explanation that says, you know, I'm not just blowing you off, but I can't do this for you, because I don't believe that I can do it well at this time. I think that most people would probably accept that as an explanation. If they don't accept that as an explanation, then they may have been …we’ll say unwittingly …trying to set up some hoops for you to jump through.

They can jump through those hoops themselves. It’s not a problem. The word no is huge for just two letters, and I invite you to use it so that you can truly get it all done.

Ladies and gentlemen, I want to thank you for joining me on this week's episode of legal biz cafe. I am your host, attorney, Shaune B Arnold. I encourage you to follow me on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter X. In each of those places, my moniker is Sean dot Arnold.

I am so excited that you joined me this week on legal biz cafe, helping me to get it all done. Until we meet again, my friends, I am attorney Shaune B Arnold, reminding you, …as always, to MAXIMIZE your COMPETENCE, …to get the CONFIDENCE …YOU NEED to succeed. I'll see you next week. Bye-bye, friends.